To the Editor:
In a Monday, July 21, article in The Dartmouth ["SAGE Focuses on Gender Interactions"], SAGE co-Chairs Greg Neichin and Posy Evans announced their plans to organize a kickball tournament to encourage healthy gender relations and expand Greek interaction to venues beyond the basements and pong tables. To encourage participation in this event, they plan to offer a $200 gift certificate to Stinson's, where "they could ... get two kegs of really good beer instead of five kegs of really horrible beer," says Neichin. This, of course, is an appropriate "reward" to those conscientious students who came out to show their support for functional gender relations.
Those smooth beers tapped from those high-class kegs will no doubt provide just the impetus for a healthy interaction between Dartmouth students. Forget putting the $200 towards buying a date rape video to include in each house's library, even though Evans claims everyone should have to watch it. Forget co-sponsoring a lecture on gender relations in the Greek system. And especially forget adding that money to the peer alcohol education program to encourage widespread education on this issue.
No, it is obvious that rewarding the participants in this healthy interactive activity with even more alcohol is the most responsible, positive, proactive step to improving inter-gender Greek relations. I am disappointed in the lack of sensitivity displayed by these actions, and it makes me question the true mission of the SAGE committee.
